


Sins of the Father

by lesbrarians



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-07
Updated: 2019-07-07
Packaged: 2020-06-23 18:37:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19707157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lesbrarians/pseuds/lesbrarians
Summary: Shepard receives a summons from her daughter’s principal, informing her that her daughter is in trouble. The ensuing conversation makes her realize that there are repercussions to her renegade actions even now, fifteen years after the Reaper Wars.





	Sins of the Father

K. Shepard never really knew what to expect when she visited her daughters’ school. She had scarcely any formal education and a bad track record when it came to speaking with authority figures, neither of which made her an ideal candidate for meeting with principals. Thus, she wasn’t particularly impressed when her info drone popped up in front of her in the middle of her workout.

“Master, you’ve received a call from the St. Janiri Academy. Your presence is requested for a disciplinary matter concerning Miss Cassiopeia.”

“Cassie?” Shepard finished off her set with two more jabs to the heavy bag, grunting with the final hook. “Are you kidding me?” she asked as she removed her gloves, unwrapping the bandages around her wrists.

“No, Master, my humor circuits are not presently activated. Why, would you like to hear a joke?”

“No, no,” Shepard said, waving it away as she reached for a towel to wipe down her face. “Just let them know I’m on my way.”

“Right away.” The drone blipped out of existence, presumably to inform the principal of her response, and Shepard heaved a sigh. Just three days ago, she had walked Cassie into school for the first time, and apparently she was already in trouble. Still, as aggravating as it was to be interrupted mid workout routine, she didn’t mind the disturbance as much as she had thought she would. She wasn’t yet used to having alone time again; she had been a stay at home dad since her first daughter was born 14 years ago, and even after Tahirah began going to school at age 10, there was still Cassie to take care of. But now that the second of her kids was 10 years old and starting school as well, Shepard wasn’t sure what to do with herself during the day anymore, at least until she picked the girls up at quarter to 2.

So, in a way, the phone call was welcome — it gave her a mission. She tossed the sweaty towel onto a bench and headed upstairs to grab the skycar’s keys. “Hey Petro,” she called out, and the info drone appeared at once with an inquisitive little _bloop_. With Glyph joining her at her new base of operations, Liara had named their second, household drone Petro. She couldn’t resist the allusion to petroglyphs, and Shepard found her enthusiasm when it came to archaeological references to be utterly endearing, so the name had stuck. “I’ll have that joke now, actually. I think I’ll need it.”

“Certainly. How many Council members does it take to change a lightbulb?”

“I don’t know, how many?”

“None. The Council won’t change anything.”

Shepard laughed out loud at that, and Petro let out a happy electronic trill at her response.

“I calculated the success probability of that joke as 99.8%, according to your specific humor chronometer, Master.”

“You know me too well. Be back in a bit, Petro.”

—–

By the time she arrived at her daughters’ school, Shepard was back to sweating like James Vega after 182 chin-ups. The skycar’s A/C was broken, and Liara had reminded her more than once to get it fixed, but she kept forgetting. After she finished dealing with whatever mess Cassie had gotten herself into, she promised herself she’d actually do it. Summer on this planet hadn’t quite ended yet, in spite of school starting up.

She always felt out of place, walking into St. Janiri’s Academy. While most of the fathers of the children who attended this school weren’t asari themselves, it _was_ a school for young asari to learn and develop at a pace suitable for their long-lived species. In the foyer stood a marble statue of the goddess Athame, flanked by smaller statues of her followers, Janiri and Lucen. For someone who was as much of a skeptic as Shepard was, it was remarkable how cowed she felt every time she laid eyes on the statues. Asari art had a way of humbling her.

She tried not to look too long at them —even though Liara assured her that Athame only watched over asari, she still felt like she was being judged— and instead hurried to the principal’s office, where she found her younger daughter waiting.

“What’s the deal, Cassie?” Shepard asked, sitting next to her on the bench outside the door. “I was halfway through my workout when I got a call from the principal.” She wiped a bead of sweat from her brow just as the secretary poked her head out the door, before Cassie had a chance to explain herself.

“Ah, Ms. Shepard, so glad you could make it.” Shepard nodded hello. She had told everyone at the school just to call her Shepard (hearing “Ms.” after years of being “Commander” was just too weird for her), but no one ever did. “Principal Allestria will see you now. Cassiopeia can wait out here.”

“Right,” Shepard said, glancing at her daughter. “We’ll get this sorted out.”

“It wasn’t my fault,” Cassie said, staring somewhat sullenly at her feet.

“I’m sure it wasn’t.” Shepard pushed herself off her knees and stood up. She followed the asari through the door to the main office, where the secretary knocked on the principal’s door.

“Ms. Shepard. Thank you for coming down to see us.” Principal Allestria said, standing up to greet Shepard as the secretary ushered her into the room. She could remember the first time she met the principal, when she and Liara first enrolled Tahirah at the school, and how easily she had been enamored by the smooth-talking matriarch in her pinstriped suit. Even now, there was still a tiny part of her that was impressed by the principal, and it was the sight of how put-together Allestria looked that made her realize she probably should have changed before coming down to the school. Her sweat-stained “Galaxy’s Best Dad” muscle shirt was clinging to her torso, and she was just now noticing that there was a hole in the thigh of her old N7 sweatpants. Not exactly appropriate meeting-with-the-principal attire.

“Principal Allestria. You caught me at a bad time,” she said by way of explanation, extending a hand for a firm handshake.

“My apologies. Thank you for coming down here on such short notice.” The principal settled back into her leather chair, motioning for Shepard to sit down as well.

Shepard sat down on the hard plastic chair opposite her desk, feeling oddly like a schoolgirl in trouble. “So what seems to be the problem?”

Allestria sighed, folding her hands on her desk. “Well, there is no polite way of saying this. Cassiopeia punched another student today.”

“Okay…” Shepard said slowly, drawing out the word as she turned this bit of news over in her head. “Why?”

“Apparently the other child made a rude comment. Regardless, the teacher told Cassiopeia that this was not an appropriate reaction, to which your daughter replied, ‘I don’t care, I’d punch her again.’ Now—”

“Hold on, wait a minute,” Shepard interrupted, holding up her hands to stop Allestria from continuing. “So you’re saying there might have been a legitimate reason for her to punch someone?”

“There is never a legitimate reason to punch someone, Ms. Shepard.”

Shepard cast her mind back to the many times she had, in fact, punched someone or thought about doing so. “Clearly you’ve never worked with politicians.”

“There is never a legitimate reason to punch a _child_ ,” she amended.

“I still want to know what the reason was. My daughter doesn’t punch people for no good reason.”

“For no good reason?” Allestria repeated. She pulled out a datapad. “Does she frequently hit others, then?”

“Not _frequently_ – you’re avoiding my question.”

“The exact nature of the comment is irrelevant. We’re here to discuss Cassiopeia’s actions.”

Shepard was starting to get mildly frustrated. “Yeah, but those actions don’t exist in an isolated bubble, and I think she deserves the chance to explain why she did what she did.”

“Ms. Shepard, that doesn’t change the fact that her actions weren’t appropriate—” Allestria tried to dissuade her, but Shepard was already out of her chair and speaking over her with a loud “I’m bringing her in.”

She opened the door, leaning out to call her daughter over. “Cassie, come here for a minute.” Cassie timidly entered the doorway, nervous at encroaching on the grown-ups’ conversation. “Principal Allestria tells me you punched someone today. Care to tell me why?”

The color rushed to Cassie’s teal cheeks, her fists unconsciously clenching. “Because— because she asked if my dad was Commander Shepard and when I said yes, she said my dad was a bad person,” she blurted out, the words tumbling over each other. “And I said no she’s not, and she said you killed innocent people and you should have stayed dead, because the world would be better off then, and, and I hit her.” Her shoulders dropped, the tension in them releasing just slightly.

“Mhm,” Shepard hummed, steepling her fingers against her lips. It was a lot to take in at once. “Thanks Cassie, that’s all I needed to know.”

Cassie looked back and forth between her father and the principal, unsure as to just what degree of trouble she was in. “Um. Okay.” She shuffled out the door, which the secretary shut behind her.

Shepard crossed an ankle over her knee and turned back to the principal. “Sounds like a logical reaction to me. What’s the problem here?”

“Ms. Shepard!” Allestria said, her tone both shocked and chastising.

“What? She’s ten, she’s a baby in your asari years, how else did you expect her to react to that? She was provoked, it’s not like she attacked another kid for no reason.”

“Provoked or not, giving another child a black eye is not an appropriate response.”

“No, but it makes _sense_.” 

“The comments might explain her actions, but they do not excuse them. Your daughter needs to be held accountable for her actions, Ms. Shepard.”

“Okay,” Shepard said, trying another tack. “Cassie could have handled the situation more tactfully, physical violence is never the answer, yadda yadda, I get that. But it takes two. Why the hell is my daughter the only one getting punished for this?”

“The other child didn’t react with physical violence,” Allestria reminded her, speaking with the kind of patience that only an educator could possess. “We’re a zero-tolerance institution, Ms. Shepard. Our students learn to resolve conflicts peacefully, with words, not fists and biotics.”

“ _Riiight_.” Shepard squinted at the asari as she drew out the word. She briefly considered demonstrating how brute force could in fact resolve conflicts just as effectively, but ultimately decided against it. As satisfying as it would be to punch the difficult headmistress in the gut, she wasn’t going to put her kids’ wellbeing at the school at risk. “That’s all well and good, but in the real world, sometimes settling conflicts means using your fists.”

“Maybe on the streets of the slums, that is how you would settle conflicts, but certainly not in polite society.”

Shepard bristled, certain that this was a subtle jibe at her background (everyone knew about her past on Earth; the vids were quick to mention her troubled childhood, especially when the Shepard Memorial Scholarship was founded). Still, she couldn’t exactly argue that point – she could and had admitted in the past that she wasn’t the best person to ask about fitting into polite society. “Fine, but people in ‘polite society’ also don’t exactly make snide comments about someone’s family and goad others into hitting them.” _And whine like a little bitch when they_ do _get hit_ , she mentally added.

Allestria sighed, and Shepard could tell her belligerence was wearing her down. “If it makes you feel any better, I will be discussing the matter with the other student’s mother at the school board meeting tonight.” She gestured towards the chair again, but Shepard didn’t move from where she was standing, refusing to sit on sheer principle. “May we get back to the matter at hand and focus on Cassiopeia? At the very least, you can’t deny that her back-talking her teacher was both rude and unacceptable.”

Shepard narrowed her eyes. Suddenly things made a lot more sense to her. “Oh, I see how it is,” she said, folding her arms across her chest and shifting her weight to one foot. “Let me see if I’ve got this right: My daughter had to listen to her family be insulted, and you sit here behind your desk talking about politeness and peacefulness. Let me guess. Your father was a hanar?” There was a small corner of her brain that realized she was acting like a douche, but there was another, much larger part that simply didn’t care. “ _She’s_ rude for sticking to her principles, but rude comments are fine when they come from the daughter of a school board member? What a load of hypocritical, bureaucratic bullshit.”

She snorted, resting her hands on Allestria’s desk and leaning across it in a more than slightly threatening manner. “How about instead of teaching my daughter not to punch people who deserve it, you start teaching your students not to make rude-ass comments in the first place?”

There was a long, tense moment of silence where neither of them broke eye contact. Allestria wasn’t easily intimidated, but she _was_ the first to look away and shuffle some papers on her desk. Shepard pushed off the surface, not bothering to hide the smug smirk that twisted the corner of her mouth. She got a perverse sense of satisfaction out of the asari’s reaction; it appealed to the side of her that needed to be the alpha male.

When Allestria spoke again, her usually smooth tone had a definite chill to it. “It’s clear to me where Cassiopeia gets this behavior from. Regardless of your personal feelings on the matter, we do not tolerate these actions at St. Janiri’s Academy. I will be in contact with Cassiopeia’s mother regarding this incident, and your daughter may return to school a week from today.” Allestria looked up at Shepard, her already cool voice growing even colder. “Perhaps she’s not quite ready for the school environment. We’ll reassess her readiness after some time away. You’re dismissed.”

“I’m _dismissed_?” Shepard didn’t even attempt to hide the indignation and incredulity in her voice. “Listen, lady, my daughter was _born_ ready for this environment. You can take your patronizing attitude and shove it up your ass. Speaking of which: eat my entire ass. Shepard out.”

She didn’t give Allestria a chance to respond, already flinging open the door and storming out of the office. “Come on, Cassie, we’re leaving,” she said tersely, grabbing her daughter’s hand and all but dragging her out of the building.

All Cassie knew was that her father was angry and she was being pulled out of school, and there was a definite tremble to her voice when she spoke. “I’m sorry, Daddy.”

At that, Shepard drew up short. She did have a weakness for seeing her children upset (a fact that Tahirah frequently abused, knowing that fake tears could soften Shepard up), but she could tell that Cassie was genuinely upset. She placed her hands on her daughter’s shoulders, stooping down to be at her level. “Cassie, don’t apologize to me. I’m not mad at you, I’m mad at Principal Allestria. You did exactly what I would have done in that situation, so how can I possibly blame you?”

“Really?” Cassie sniffed.

“Yeah. Really. I know you’re not supposed to hit people, and I know you know that too, but sometimes people are jerks to you and it happens. If anything, this is my fault. I’m your dad, you probably learned all this from me. It’s not something I’m proud of, but you and me, we’re protective of our family, and sometimes that means getting physical when the moment calls for it.” She led Cassie to the skycar, buckling her into the backseat. “Anyways, it looks like we’re both in trouble now. Principal Allestria’s calling Mom. You’re suspended from school for a week, and I got kicked out of the principal’s office.”

Cassie giggled, the tears that had been welling in her eyes dissipating. There was a certain solidarity in knowing that her father was on her side in spite of her mistakes. They finished crossing the parking lot, Shepard opening the doors of the skycar with a click of the button on her key fob. “Mommy’s gonna be disappointed…” She had a right to be concerned; Liara’s disappointment was a thousand times worse than when she actually got angry.

“I’ll talk to her,” Shepard assured her, buckling her into the backseat before sliding into the driver’s seat herself. “She might not agree with how it went down, but I don’t blame you for what you did. You were sticking up for me.” She raised her eyes to the rearview mirror and made eye contact with Cassie. “Thanks for that. It sounds to me like the other kid got what she deserved.”

“Yeah. She did. She was being mean and a liar. And I don’t like people saying mean things about my family.” Shepard had to smile at that, she could see herself shining through in her daughter there. She pulled out of the parking lot, ascending into a lane of traffic. “Stupid Elnora,” Cassie muttered, kicking the back of Shepard’s seat.

Shepard startled, and not just at the unexpected thump against her back. “Elnora? I know that name… hang on.” She laid on the horn. “Hey asshole, you’re holding up the line back here!” she hollered out the window. The only response she got was an echoed angry honk and an extended blue middle finger. Shepard huffed and swerved around the skycar, Cassie automatically holding onto the door handle to brace herself, used to her father’s reckless driving habits. “Any chance that’s a family name?”

Cassie shrugged. “I dunno. All I know is, she brags all the time that her mom’s from Nos Astra and is really rich. Tobie says her dad’s a batarian but he’s not in the picture. Whatever that means.”

Shepard wanted to make a snide comment about how Elnora was probably just jealous that Cassie had a father around, but she knew that wasn’t the truth, or at least not the whole truth. “Illium. So much for coincidences. I think I know why she hates me so much.” She flicked on her blinker and pulled out of the lane of traffic, wanting to give the conversation her full attention. It was a conversation she had expected to have with her daughters at some point in her life – she had just thought it would have been when they were older. She turned around in her seat to look her daughter in the eye. “If she was named after another Elnora from Illium, I _might_ have killed someone in her family. But no matter what your Elnora says, she wasn’t innocent,” she quickly added.

“Oh,” Cassie said quietly, her face somber.

“Look, I’m not going to lie to you, Cassie. I’ve done some morally questionable things in my life. You already know I’ve killed people. I was a sentinel in the military and a Spectre, it’s part of the job. But I promise you that every person I’ve personally killed was a dangerous individual, and I only did it to make the world a safer place. And if innocent people lost their lives as a result of my actions, it was only so more people didn’t have to suffer. The Elnora I took out was a mercenary who murdered an innocent volus, then tried to shoot me.”

“She doesn’t sound like a nice person.”

“She wasn’t. She called me a mean name too. Sounds kind of like your Elnora, huh?” Cassie cracked a smile at that, nodding. “Look,” Shepard continued. “I did what I had to do. I don’t regret what I’ve done, but I know that I’ve made some enemies out there. I just never expected that my family would pay for that someday.” She reached out to stroke her daughter’s cheek. “I’m sorry, Cassie,” she said, and it was perhaps the most sincere apology she had ever made. “This probably won’t be the last time you’ll get flak for the things I’ve done in the past, and I’m sorry that you have to go through this because of me. You deserve better.”

“It’s okay, Daddy,” Cassie told her, covering her hand with her own, much smaller, one. “I know you did the right thing.”

“Thanks, sweetheart. That’s all I’m going to say on the matter. Your mom’s not going to be happy I told you all that, and maybe I should have waited until you were older. But if you’re going to have kids pick on you because I’ve pissed off people, then you deserve to know.”

“Well, if anyone else picks on me and says mean things about you, I’ll just punch them.”

“That’s my girl.” Shepard chuckled and leaned in to kiss her forehead. “You probably should wait until you’re not in school to punch them, though. Less chance of getting in trouble that way. And next time Elnora has something to say, you can tell her that her aunt or whoever was a bad person and a killer too.”

“She’d probably cry if I did.”

“Do it, what a brat.” Shepard turned back around, eyeing the traffic to make sure there weren’t any police around to notice that she was pulled over in a no-fly zone. “You think she’s gonna have a bruise?”

Cassie’s face broke out into a smile. “Yeah, all over her cheek.”

“Look at you, my mini-Bruiser. Don’t tell Mom I said so, but I’m proud of you, kid.” She smiled into the rearview mirror and was pleased to receive a beaming grin in return. “We’ve still got a few hours before we have to go pick Tahirah up, and I’m sure we’ll be hearing from Mom soon. What do you say we go get some dessert before that bomb drops?”

“Yes!” She could see Cassie bounce excitedly in the rearview mirror, and she had to laugh.

“Key Lime Se’Lai, here we come.” She glanced over her shoulder before pulling back into traffic. “And you know, all things considered… I guess it could have been worse. You could be going to school with Khalisah Al-Jilani’s daughter.”


End file.
